Would you like to buy cookies for equality?

It’s that time of year again, when adorable children and their parents stand outside of grocery store entrances and sweetly ask us to spend $4 a box on Girl Scout cookies. If you’re like me—lacking in self-control—you’ll often give in and buy some.

I was never a Girl Scout, but I understand their general cause: to teach usable skills to girls that will enable them to become independent and empowered women. I’d never really considered that the funds from boxes of delicious Girl Scout cookies went anywhere beyond funding the organization’s activities.

So when an Internet meme circulated last week that blasted where the money from Girl Scout cookies was going, I became intrigued.

The message is clearly written by someone who doesn’t support the organization’s use of its funds. One bullet point reads: “Former Girl Scouts USA CEO Kathy Cloninger publicly admitted on NBC’s Today Show in 2004 that Girl Scout troops and councils partner with Planned Parenthood across the country to provide ‘good’ and ‘information-based’ explicit sex education. She has not retracted that statement.”

It goes on to criticize GSUSA for “welcoming and hiding ‘transgenders’ in Girl Scout troops,” and requiring the reading of books that promote “abortion advocates, ‘progressive’ socialists, Marxists, lesbians and extreme-left liberals.”

While basic research reveals that GSUSA doesn’t provide funds to Planned Parenthood, the organization has made public its relationship with Planned Parenthood, in addition to many other organizations, in order to bring information-based sex education to young women.

Girls can earn badges for reading “journey” books (that supposedly have leftist role models), which are stories about everything from science to healthy eating to public speaking and are meant to empower Girl Scouts.

The claim about “welcoming and hiding ‘transgenders’” can be found easily; one child born with male genitalia had always identified as a female and was indeed allowed by the GSUSA to join a troop. These types of stories aren’t revolutionary, yet they demonstrate an organization that is adapting and progressing.

Most interestingly, the meme has been co-opted by the same “liberals” it lambasts as a reason to buy Girl Scout cookies this year. Looking beyond the discriminatory language of the claims, it shows an organization that invests in actions that promote a better future for women in the U.S., including access to health care, tolerance and education about our differences. Not only are they teaching young women to be active members of the community at a young age, they are also funding projects that will allow for these young women to thrive when they get older.

The Boy Scouts have been under fire many times in the last few years for their intolerant policies toward members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and trangender community and those of different religious affiliations.

The organization’s bad press has been widespread and has certainly tainted its name and cause; they have been blasted for funding activities that go against the lessons they teach to children. While technically “unaffiliated,” the nature of the organization implies that it has specific religious and subsequent moral ties, and yet how it is evolving tells a very different story than what it claims to be doing.

After finding out about this ongoing attack against the Girl Scouts, I feel perfectly comfortable buying a few extra boxes of cookies this week, knowing full well that my money is going toward funding an organization that prepares its young members for a future strong in women’s rights and equality.